Rights management systems, such as digital rights management (DRM) systems, have been used to deliver content to only specified recipients and/or with specific usage rights (e.g., read only) and/or for a specific period of time. In some cases, such systems have been used to generate an audit trail of who accessed content in what manner and when. Compliance systems have been provided to ensure that content communicated electronically, e.g., sent to/from a user associated with an enterprise or other network with which the compliance system is associated, complies with applicable regulation, rule, and/or policy; to ensure that such content does not contain malicious code, such as a virus, or otherwise pose a computer security threat; and/or to provide and/or manage access to stored content, e.g., by providing a searchable index and/or database of such content and/or managing the access and storage of content through an information lifecycle. Some such systems, e.g., information lifecycle management (ILM) systems, provide the ability to store and retrieve content on demand as needed for a specified period of time and/or for the content to be migrated to different levels of storage and/or ultimately verifiably deleted depending on the need to access and/or retain the content through one or more lifecycle phases. Companies and other entities are using various rights management (RM) and encryption systems to secure and make private the transport and use of documents, files, communications, and other content. Companies and other entities are also using content inspection technologies in order to enforce compliance with various government, regulatory, and internal restrictions. For example, stock brokerages are under significant industry and government regulation with regard to the type, content, and form of communication with their customers. The brokerages must monitor all communications with customers and be able to quickly and accurately retrieve copies of archived communications on demand.
Often a compliance monitoring system is rendered useless when a company receives content which is controlled by a RM system. The compliance system cannot analyze the content due to access restrictions placed on the content by the RM system. For example, content that has been encrypted by the RM system is unintelligible to the compliance monitoring system if the content cannot be decrypted. Consequently, RM systems can prevent companies from controlling, managing, and/or providing access to content, which in some cases the company is compelled by law to be able to retrieve and produce. Therefore there exists a need for a better way to perform compliance processing with respect to rights managed content.